Use 3D Touch To Snap Photos From The iPhone Home Screen With Point-And-Shoot

The iOS jailbreak community never ceases to amaze. The solutions that come out of the Cydia store often aim to make your iPhone or iPad usage significantly more productive or convenient through simplification, and developers always seem to find an area of Apple’s mobile OS to remodel or improve.

Take the new Cydia tweak Point-and-Shoot, for example. This little gem for 3D Touch-enabled devices lets you use the Quick Actions menu of the stock Camera app to take photos and selfies right from the Home screen. It certainly does make snapping pictures a tad faster and significantly more convenient, but at the cost of the many features you have access to within the app. The tweak doesn’t aim to completely replace conventional usage of the Camera app, though; it’s meant to offer you a quick alternative for when it’s needed, same as the Quick Actions menu itself.

With the tweak at default settings, hard-pressing the Camera icon and selecting either the Take Selfie or Take Photo options from the Quick Actions menu will replace said menu with a camera viewfinder of the same size, allowing you to take photos without having to open the app itself. Tap anywhere within the viewfinder, and it will snap a photo and automatically return you to the Home screen.

You can also – and this is our favorite part – resize the viewfinder by dragging its bottom-right edge around. The pinch-to-zoom gesture is available as well, the flash is set to automatic and you can hold over the viewfinder for autofocus, but for any other option, including the HDR and Live Photo toggles, you will have to open the app.

The tweak adds its own configuration menu to the Settings app, which offers options that allow you to continue tapping the viewfinder to take multiple photos and have either the front facing or rear camera viewfinder appear immediately whenever the Camera app’s Quick Actions menu is invoked, saving you even more time.

Point-and-Shoot is available for free on Cydia’s BigBoss repo. Note that apart from the 3D Touch-sporting iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, the tweak will work with any iOS 9-compatible device that has a 3D Touch-enabling tweak like HOPP’N or RevealMenu installed. We tested it on an iPhone 6 Plus with the aid of HOPP’N and couldn’t find any issues.

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